Thursday, May 1, 2014

Searching for the Soul of My New Machine

10:27 AM, 1 May 2014

Here we go: A new machine, a new writing device. I hereby
christen my new laptop. I bid goodbye to my older, failing computer. For practical,
time-saving reasons I moved from pushing pens and pencils to using a keyboard
to keep my journal about four months ago.

Still, pens and pencils beckon me. They pull me back to them
with their prized portability and lack of malfunction and required learning
curve. Rarely are there software updates or 2.1 versions of college-ruled
notebooks or medium-point blue-ink pens. They don’t need internet connections
and I’m not required to register online and find my way through a fourteen-step
installation process to hold a tangible paper representation of my writing in hand.
Yes, admittedly there are spelling and editing drawbacks. Do I sound like I’m
trying to talk myself into this new-fangled machine-writing habit? I am trying to stick with it. I am trying to
find the benefits to it. After all the time I spent meticulously transcribing
old journals into a digital format you would think I would never look back.

Nostalgia grabs me. I like my stack of weathered notebooks,
worn and crumpled from getting stuffed into backpacks, suitcases, and diaper
bags, splashed with green tea and the occasional tear, doodled upon relentlessly
and absentmindedly. When I open them there’s an exhale released from long ago.
They aren't color-corrected with military margins. Instead, they carry a scent
from another era, an older chapter of my life. There are cross-outs and little
carets where I inserted afterthoughts and qualifiers. It is easy to surmise
what kind of mood I was in and how tired I was by the attitude of my hand
printing. I always printed. My script
was, and still is, abominable and continues to suffer from dearth of practice. Even
my signature is sloppy and unreadable. And then there’s blue ink, my favorite.
No matter how crisp and clear and perfectly spaced my Word documents are, they
will never provoke the satisfaction and gratification derived from watching fresh
blue ink scratchings settle and dry on those faint blue college rules. As a
lefthander, I always wrote from above, a necessary, contorted position to avoid
dragging the side of my hand through wet ink. Nevertheless, I spent years of my
life with a faint blue haze on the hammy side of my left pinky and fist, a
handwriting tattoo of sorts.

This new machine is clever. The keyboard is comfortable and
yielding. Transcription is a long and arduous process. I still need to cover ten
more years of hand-written notebooks, a task I try not to think too deeply
about as it will tip me into a bout of bone weariness. How will I get it all
done? Is it really worth it? Distractions abound. I search for my focus and
gird my determination. I hope - I long, to complete this process soon and get on
with the fun of revision, of weaving all this life work together.